


modern chess openings (or ways to fuck up and fix your life)

by magnetichearts



Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Drug Addiction, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Second Person, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unreliable Narrator, i'm well aware this probably sucks but i love her so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:41:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28432593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnetichearts/pseuds/magnetichearts
Summary: Chess, you think, watching Benny’s smirking face in the yellow light of the bar, is a lot like dancing.or; beth has never been good at defending. she has always been all attack, all teeth, and all blood
Relationships: Beth Harmon & Alma Wheatley, Beth Harmon & Jolene
Comments: 3
Kudos: 34





	modern chess openings (or ways to fuck up and fix your life)

**Author's Note:**

> for all my depression and anxiety ridden ex gifted kids, this is for you. beth harmon is me and i am her and i absolutely love her and yeah this might suck but. i did what i did
> 
> don't come at me for the chess terms go attack google

Chess, you think, watching Benny’s smirking face in the yellow light of the bar, is a lot like dancing. 

The way you and Benny move, around each other on the board, reminds you of the waltz. Skirting around one another, moving on the same plane, calculated and precise and chaotic. 

(and, like dance, chess is a performance. a showcase. the only thing that ever changes is who you are performing for)

**_the sicilian defense: black pawn to c5_ **

When you are twelve years old, you sit cross legged on your bed and thumb through your book. _Modern Chess Openings._ The pages are well worn—but they were like that before you got it, from Mr. Shaibel or someone else, you are not sure—and they nearly fall out of the page because of use. 

There are moments, you think, just before you fall asleep and just after you wake up, when you look up at the ceiling and see chess pieces moving, a world of sixty-four, a labyrinth of moves to lock yourself into or break yourself out of. 

And then you blink, and it is gone. 

**_bird’s opening: white pawn to f3_ **

You lay in the grass next to the flowers you planted for Alma and stare at the sky. A single hawk—you think, at least, at Methuen they had never made it a point to teach you anything beyond Bible verses and hymns—glides overhead, marring the spotless blue sky. 

You cross your ankles over one another and drum your fingers against your stomach—a whirlwind of constant motion, the sea pulling and pushing at the pit of your throat. 

Closing your eyes, your breath. In. Out. Queen diagonal. Queen horizontal. Queen vertical. This is all you know. 

The hawk, you think, has vanished. 

(was it ever there at all?) 

**_castling: a move involving either players’ rooks and a player’s king_ **

Alma is unlike any woman you have ever met before in your life, soft and strong and weak and hard, all at the same time. You spend a while puzzling it—her—out. She plays the piano and falls down the rabbit hole of alcohol, wraps herself in satin and velvet and cigarettes. 

You watch her silently, sometimes, when she plays the piano, and thinks—this is like chess. 

Everything, of course, always comes back to chess. It is the only thing—the only thing—you are sure of in your life. 

A car crash and a dead mother and an absentee father and a broken heart and little green pills—these are all temporary. These are all unpredictable. Chess, even with its thousands of moves, more than even you can count, is forever. 

You clasp your fingers around one another and watch as she finishes playing the song, the peace on her face, and not for the first or last time, you think—what would it be like to _create._

(alma is a paradoxical woman, and you want to be nothing like her and exactly like her all at the same time. perhaps you are more like your mother—both your mothers—than you thought) 

Who is she, you think? The pawn, or the queen? 

(perhaps she is neither. perhaps she is something else—something too complex to puzzle out, even more so than chess. perhaps she is human—but you have never been good at understanding that, so you distill it into chess) 

Alma looks up at you, and gasps, placing her hand on her heart, and she has always been so dramatic, so flamboyant, but then she shakes her head, smiles, and leads you to the kitchen for dinner. 

**_hanging: an unprotected piece, attacked by your opponent_ **

Chess as a sport originated in northwest India in the Gupta Empire. It was there before you, and it will be there after you. 

There used to be games with large, human sized chess pieces, and the nobles, the elite, the wealthy—you have forgotten what that feels like, at all of ten years old, sitting in your bed—would play by moving pieces around on the board. Moving humans around on the board. 

Control is a beautiful thing. 

**_perpetual check: a situation where one player keeps checking the other indefinitely_ **

You will never go back to Mexico City again. 

**_hold: to successfully defend_ **

Too glamorous to be a serious chess player. 

You turn the words over and over in your head and froth at the mouth a bit. 

(you have never really managed to hide your wild nature. you use it in chess) 

Too glamorous. You close our eyes and imagine—imagine the look on Borgov’s face when a girl—a _woman,_ actually—half his age defeats him. You will be the best. You do not know anything else. 

Your clothes are just another part of your life you can control. 

**_en passant:_ ** **_a special pawn capture that can only occur immediately after a pawn makes a move of two squares from its starting square_ **

You control your ecstasy. 

Sex, Hendrick’s, Chesterfields, Xanzolam. 

(chess) 

You have never been good at curbing your addictions. 

Which one of your vices will you pick next, Beth? 

**_zugzwang: a situation where a player is forced to make an undesirable move_ **

Alma’s watch hangs off of your wrist as you lean back against the wall. 

Jolene sits next to you, cross legged. 

She has been there for you. She has always been there for you. 

(you are not an orphan, beth) 

And when she tells you she will give you the money, when she tells you she will loan you the money for _your_ dream, instead of her own, that is when you know you have to win. 

You reach over, and thread your hand through hers. Black and white. 

She squeezes it, tight, so tight it hurts, and you reach over, and pull her into a hug, bury your face into her shoulder, and breathe. 

Jolene doesn’t smell the same, no longer of cigarettes and that stale, stale air that always lingered around the orphanage. She smells fresher now, like flowers and Kentucky spring air. 

And yet, she feels the same. Strong, and sure, and steady. 

Jolene has always been the steadiest thing in your life. 

**_blunder: a move that may cost you the game_ **

The thing is, for an addict, rock bottom is never good enough. 

You lose track of how many relationships you ruin. 

Benny. Harry. Mike and Matt. Cleo. Levertov. Wexler. 

(shaibel, alma, and jolene too—but were they ever yours to ruin?)

Addiction, you think, letting the little green pills fall into your palm, one by one, is a lot like dancing. 

You think you are in control, but you never are. 

**_king’s indian defense: aggressive and risky; black will not be satisfied with a draw_ **

It feels like heartbreak when you break Alma’s watch. 

**_caro-kann defence: black pawn to c6_ **

Grandmaster. 

You roll the word around in your mouth until it is as smooth as a marble, almost like liquid gold. 

Beth Harmon. Grandmaster. 

You cannot remember wanting anything more. 

And you will do whatever it takes to achieve it. 

**_sharp: a move that attempts to grab the initiative_ **

You’re high as a kite and drunk off your ass and you have never been happier there is nothing to control and fuck you feel fucking free and you don’t have to worry about anything and Tim—fucking Tim obssessed with Dostoyevsky and fucking virgins—hands you a joint and you take it and you smoke it and you smoke smoke smoke until you cannot smoke anymore and you lazy around in his apartment and drink him out of his house what are you dinking you don’t even know but you drink and drink until you can’t anymore and you have never been freer in your life who needs happiness when you have the bottom of a bottle? 

**_poisoned pawn: a pawn that appears to be free but will set off a trap against you if you take it_ **

Benny’s smile against your back is slow and lazy and this, you think, is what you have been missing out on. 

You want to close your eyes and stay here forever. Stay here in this haven you have created, this space where you have felt free and safe and for the first time in your life, you are not tempted to reach for something to numb the pain. There is no pain to numb, just the drag of his fingers against your skin and his smile. 

(beth, oh beth, shouldn’t you know by now that good things never last?) 

**_benoni defense: benoni means “son of my sorrow”_ **

Mr. Shaibel is the closest thing to a father you have ever known, and will ever know. 

Allston, you know, will burn in the depths of hell, and you will make sure of it. 

**_discovered attack:_ ** **_a chess tactic, when a piece moves to reveal an attack from previously hidden long range piece_ **

Your mother killed herself because she could not take care of you. 

Your mother drank herself to death because she could not cope. 

Your father abandoned you. Twice. 

And you, Beth, have learned how people always leave. You have learned it in the hard way. 

(caïssa, goddess of chess, would think you weak, would she not?) 

Sixty-four. Sixty four squares. Thousands of openings. And yet you, Beth, lose against life, every time. 

When will you learn how to play the game? 

**_gambit: a pawn sacrifice made in the opening_ **

The queen, you remember, is the most powerful piece on the board. 

You lie back on your bed, the torn open canopy hanging above you, and you win. Over and over again. 

Breathe, you remind yourself. 

(here is the thing about chess. the real game, the true game, is never played on the board. it is played between you and your opponent, in your mind. you cannot crack. you cannot be weak. and here is what you understand better than most others—is that it is a simple matter of endurance. you train yourself to not crack, train yourself not to show a bit of weakness, not a fraction of tension) 

Breathe. 

**_alekhine’s defense: white pawn to e4, black knight to f6_ **

It is too easy, alone in your house, after the hardest loss of your life (and it’s that fucking weird, that losing a chess game hits you harder than losing both your mothers?) to spiral. 

Marijuana and nicotine and benzodiazepines and alcohol and a thousand other drugs mixing in your system. You dance around your living room to music only you can hear and drink and drink and drink—you know what your neighbors think of you but at this point you’re so fucking tired you just don’t give a shit. You are desperate to feel something—feel anything other than this overwhelming grief. 

Why can’t you shake the feeling this is nothing more than an adjournment? 

One day you will wake up and Alma will be alive and you will be a fucking Grandmaster and you will have _won._

It is a fantasy, and you, Beth, have never been good at dreaming up fantasies. 

What—who—are you mourning? 

(genius and madness go hand in hand, that lady from the magazine said, and you, beth, know that better than almost anyone else) 

You think there’s a punchline there, but you can’t find the fucking joke. 

**_draw: neither side wins or loses_ **

You have never been as alone as you think you are, Beth, and Borgov proves that to you. 

Alma and Shaibel and Jolene and Matt and Harry and Benny and Mike and Levertov and Wexler and Cleo and Townes and Annette and even fucking Margaret. 

They are playing with you, and you win because you play for them. 

(for alma. for alice) 

**_control: domination of a square or important squares_ **

You have always been a little too much for Lexington, Beth. And there is nothing wrong with that. This house, Alma’s house, _your_ house, is bursting at the seams trying to contain you. 

(when you play benny for the first time you understand how chess can create. he leaves a fucking michaelangelo on the board and you want to throttle him—and then sculpt your own) 

Methuen could never really hold you down, and the only thing keeping you here, really, are the hours you spent poring over chess books with Alma perched in her corner, sipping her drink. There is nothing for you here besides the ghost of her, but isn’t that why you stay? 

You have nothing else to remind you of her. 

And then Jolene comes, and she breathes life back into it, and gives you back the control you crave. 

**_end game: the final part of the game_ **

One by one, the pills land in the toilet, and you flush them down. 

The urge to take them back, to find them, nearly overwhelms you, and you drop to your knees. 

But they are gone, and you will have to do what you can now. 

(you have always relied on yourself, beth) 

**_check mate:_** **_to end the game_**

Beth Harmon. World Champion. 

Daughter, friend, sister, lover. 

(addict)

You will never stop being any of these things. 

Control, you realize, is overrated.

**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me on tumblr about the show: @[parkersedith](https://parkersedith.tumblr.com)


End file.
